Product Description

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner.

But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn't be proud, but your grandparents, would be delighted.

Dominion is not a CCG, but the play of the game is similar to the construction and play of a CCG deck. The game comes complete with roughly 500 cards. You select 10 of the 20+ Kingdom card types to include in any given play -- leading to immense variety.

Product Reviews

Before I got into board games this was the first game i played with my cousin and at
first I thought it was going to be like all the other card games I hated but really
just the opposite. I was shocked how much strategy a card game like this could have
in general cause your not just being passed a random hand of cards but your actually
customizing the cards you want for yourself and using those cards to buy even better
cards. The most important ones are victory cards which are needed to win the game.

Wow... just wow. This game is incredible. I have been avidly playing Euro games since I
stumbled across Catan years ago. This is one of my more favorite games simply because no
two games are the same. With only playing 10 out of the available 24 cards each game,
strategies change drastically. 5/5 stars, worth your time if you're looking for a card game
with a lot of replay value.

From a newsletter from game publisher Rio Grande Games comes the startling statistic
that Dominion and its expansions have collectively sold more than one million copies
when summing sales across all languages. One million plus! Does that make designer
Donald X a millionaire? At any rate, with two expansions being released each year,
that staggering number is only going to grow, and as Dominion slowly makes inroads
into the mainstream, it's surely primed to become a mass market cash cow. Make no
mistake, deck-building is in. While Dominion owes a lot to ideas borrowed from the
grandfather of CCGs, Magic the Gathering, and other games in that genre, there's no
doubt that by successfully taking these concepts to the world of modern board games,
Dominion has helped father an entire new genre of its own.

Who would have guessed that the game would have such an impact when it first appeared
in 2008? Time is certainly proving to enhance its appeal, and numerous expansions
only help consolidate its solid reputation as an excellent card game that is very
accessible to a variety of people. Dominion is a great game - but only when it's
correctly judged for what it tries to be. It's no complex game with a limited appeal
restricted only for die-hard boardgamers, and intended to be a meaty main course,
enjoyed slowly over the course of an evening, with much chewing required on the part
of those who undertake its consumption. Dominion is more like fast food: quick, and
addictive. I should confess to loving the deck-building and gameplay of CCGs, and
this has the feel of all of that in 20-30 minutes.

Overall, the pros more than outweigh the cons, and for me the cons are mostly
insignificant. The unique mechanics, interesting decisions and potential for
synergistic play, combined with quick game-play and remarkable replayability/variety
all really make this game the success that it is proving to be. There's no doubt that
Dominion is something special, and has already proven that. In an unprecedented
fashion, it cracked the BoardGameGeek Top Ten in a matter of less than a month, and
hasn't looked back since. Its list of conquests includes the coveted Spiel Des
Jahres, and many a Game-of-the-Year-Award in many a country. Now less than three
years down the track, it's already a millionaire, and shows no signs of slowing its
pace. Congratulations Dominion! And if you're new to modern games, this is an
excellent place to start!